Roger Daltrey Announces ‘The Who’s Tommy Orchestral’ Live Album

The Who singer Roger Daltrey announced the release of a live album, The Who’s Tommy Orchestral, on June 14.

It was recorded in Budapest, Hungary and Bethel Woods, N.Y., during a 2018 tour in which Daltrey performed the classic rock opera with the collaboration of local orchestras.

You can listen to the new version of “Pinball Wizard” below.

“Pete [Townshend]’s music is particularly suited to being embellished by the sounds that an orchestra can add to the band,” Daltrey said in a statement. “Tommy can mean whatever you want it to mean; I use the characters in it as metaphors for parts of the human condition, so it’s a kind of a story of the human spirit. Even though it is 50 years on, I approach it as though I’m singing it for the first time.”

Even though the Who include significant parts of Tommy in their new orchestral tour, guitarist and composer Townshend said their full performance in London last year was their last.

“I have real trouble with Tommy,” he told Rolling Stone. “We did it recently at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer shows. And I sort of had a bit of a breakdown halfway through it. I get very triggered by it. When I wrote it, I wasn’t aware of a lot of the issues that I have personally.”